Sunday, 26 April 2020

Ballasting the track.


The least favorite part of building a model railway has to be ballasting the track.

The tedious part is getting the ballast to go, and stay, where you want it and preferably not in the pointwork mechanism. I use a fine granite ballast from Attwood Agregates.

My way of securing the ballast is, once it is laid and relatively even, is first to spray with a very fine mist of water with a drop of washing up liquid. Once this is soaked then dilute PVA, again with a drop of w/u liquid is applied with a cheap plastic pipette. Nothing more to do but let it dry,overnight, and hope that it all sticks where you want it to.

For the clay siding I have applied some magnesium ballast to help with weathering the track once the loading buildings are set in place. This I have tried to blend with the granite ballast.

1 comment:

  1. My least favourite job too. Surgical Spirit also helps break down the resistance so I'm told.

    ReplyDelete